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Staten Island's Malliotakis won't back down in calls for Silver to resign, despite confrontation on Assembly floor

Updated on June 25, 2013 at 12:36 PMPosted on June 25, 2013 at 9:04 AM

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Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis has no intention of backing down in her calls for scandal-scarred Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to resign, even after being told by a colleague she "should quiet down."

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis has no intention of backing down in her calls for scandal-scarred Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to resign, even after being told by a colleague she "should quiet down."

"I am going to continue to do and say, both here and in Albany, what is right," Ms. Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) told the Advance in a phone interview early Tuesday morning.

She was responding to a report in the New York Post that she was approached by Assemblywoman Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan) about her attacks on Silver because of his involvement in the Vito Lopez sexual harassment case.

"You've been in the paper a lot talking about the Speaker," Ms. Glick told Ms. Malliotakis on the Assembly floor, according to the Post, citing "a person who overheard the conversation.

"Just as a human, it's really appalling that this is happening in state
government, and they're brushing it under the rug as if it's no big
deal. And now taxpayers are going to have to defend him?" Ms.
Malliotakis told the Advance on Friday.

Silver has admitted to authorizing a payout of $103,000 in taxpayer money to secretly settle sexual harassment complaints by two female staffers of disgraced ex-Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito Lopez.

Lopez resigned in May, and Silver has been hit with lawsuits from two more female Lopez staffers, who say that the settlement prevented them from knowing about Lopez's history before they started working for him.

In May, Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who was appointed special prosecutor after Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes recused himself from the case, announced he wouldn't file criminal charges against Lopez, though he referred to his investigation's findings as alarming.